North Korean tourism: it costs more than you think

The Western media has began selling North Korea as the new hot tourism destination. But at what cost? (AFP)

AFP

The death of Kim Jong-il just one month ago wasn't meant to be a surprise.

For at least the last four years, images of the now Dearly Departed Leader had revealed a truth that even the North Korean propaganda machine could not hide. He was ill and it wasn't likely to be the result of a cold or a bad batch of recently smuggled lobster.

Western analysts surmised that the leader of the world's most inward-looking country was terminally ill and on December 19, 2011 they were vindicated.

While there were undoubtedly genuine tears shed this fateful day, there was a room full of comrades not far from the glass-encased corpse that would soon realise that they had every reason to celebrate. The people responsible for attracting overseas visitors to North Korea had just been handed a global publicity bonanza.

North Korea was newsworthy and for once it wasn't because of its nuclear program. Within hours, newspaper editors all over the world would be finding ways to get travel writers into "The Hermit Kingdom". North Korea would oblige with (very) organised five-day tours for the unfathomable fee of €3,000. North Korea is, by almost every measure imaginable, a failed state in which the average citizen earns less than $US100 a year. So, where was the money going?

While the embalmers were busy draining the fluid from the Dear Leader's body, the Western media had begun selling North Korea as the world's new adventure tourism destination. A North Korean stamp in your passport not only granted you entry to the most isolated country on Earth, it guaranteed you the title of Most Interesting Dinner Guest of 2012. ("Burma! No-one's visiting Burma anymore. Have you been to North Korea?").

What these editors overlooked, failed to understand or simply didn't care about however was that tourism in North Korea is not a benign activity. It has the potential to literally kill. This is because a large percentage of money spent by tourists in this part of the world is channelled to the Kim regime through what has become known as Room 39.

Room 39 is the name given by Western intelligence agencies to the arm of the Kim regime responsible for raising the hard currency needed to preserve its grip on power. Even in the world's last Stalinist regime, money is power and the Kims have never had good credit.

North Korea stopped paying its bills over 20 years ago and its own currency, the Won, is so worthless that not even North Koreans use it. Companies supplying Kim with the bling needed to stave off a military coup sensibly demand upfront payment in cold, hard cash. A suitcase full of it has a way of removing minor trade barriers like Obama's embargoes and United Nations' sanctions. Whether it's a case of Hennessy cognac or a several hundred cars, where there's a suitcase, there's a way.

This was never more apparent than on December 28 when social media delivered the marvellously absurd opportunity for millions of free global citizens to provide a live and uncensored commentary on the dictator's funeral procession. One common question posed in the Tweets was how could a regime that can't feed its people afford so many luxury European cars? It's a good question with a very easy answer - Room 39.

To people living comfortably in the West, Room 39 might appear to be a fairly harmless social fund. All dictators have them, don't they? It is, however, the junction that links the gawking tourist with the ruthless oppression of more than 24 million people.

This is because all governments, even the most repugnant, require a source of legitimacy. In most Western democracies this is sourced from regular and fair elections. In the one-party state of China, the central Communist Party placates the masses with an ever-improving quality of life on the condition that they never mention the "D" word.

In North Korea, the Kim family derives its legitimacy from terror. To be clear, we're not talking about random and one-off events exacted on airline passengers or workers in extra tall buildings. This is a terror that hangs so thick in the air that you can't help but draw it in with every breath of your miserable existence. One that ensures a throwaway remark about the Young General's atypical girth will deprive you not only of your meagre possessions, but your very life and possibly the lives of the three generations that surround you.

With approximately 24 million victims in need of daily doses of terror, North Korea is far too big for the Kim family alone. It's the special relationship between the family and the country's million-man army that guarantees they sleep soundly and their subjects with one eye open. This relationship was forged through Kim Jong-il's military first policy, which essentially means little more than the military gets first dibs on all the good stuff. For humble soldiers, this means an occasional bowl of rice. For the military leadership, however, it translates to Rolex watches, Prada bags, top-shelf wines and luxurious apartments in the country's showcase capital city.

To give credit where it's due, even to this loathsome assembly of thugs, tourism alone cannot provide all of the money needed to keep the top brass in Gucci. Room 39 coordinates a number of legal and illegal fundraising activities ranging from the production and sale of fake Viagra to gunrunning in Africa. It must be said, however, that the thousands of foreigners who visit the country each year are a big part of the problem.

So what do visitors to North Korea get in return for the €3,000 with which they must part before they even board the plane?

Do they deepen their understanding of North Korean culture? Absolutely not! As journalists are only too eager to tell us, visitors are locked in a hermetically sealed bubble of flawless propaganda from the moment their feet touch North Korean soil. Tourists are only ever shown the highlights of Pyongyang, a literal Potemkin village that is home only to the most loyal, and therefore obedient, of Kim's followers. Tourist trains into China complete most of the North Korean leg of their journey at night so that the prying eyes of Westerners see only darkness when they travel through the countryside where life is embarrassingly precarious.

Don't tourists expose North Koreans to the outside world? Well, sort of but not in any meaningful way. It is illegal for ordinary North Koreans to communicate with foreigners, even if the said foreigner is standing right in front of them. Most will avoid the gaze of a tourist so as not to be accused of "engaging the enemy" so much so that many who return from North Korea report feeling invisible. People who are required to come into contact with outsiders are carefully screened. They know exactly what to say and what not to hear.

Doesn't the tourist dollar help lift North Koreans out of poverty? Nothing could be further from the truth. As any aid worker ejected from the country over the past 10 years will attest, ordinary North Koreans don't see a single tourist dollar. While Room 39 delivers all the trimmings to the elite, people in the outlying provinces are left to literally scratch-out an existence, surviving on insects, rodents, grass and tree bark.

So, we return to the question of value. What do tourists get for a sum that would otherwise buy two weeks in Paris? The answer is delivered not long after the entrée at your inner-suburbanite dinner party when the perennial game of jet-set one-upmanship begins. ("We certainly didn't eat this well in North Korea. Oh, you haven't been?").

Tourism isn't meant to be an altruistic activity. We don't visit Bali to help struggling Indonesians, although this may be a happy by-product of our visit. Likewise, no-one wants to hear about gulags and famine when they're zipping through an exotic location in a minibus. On the other hand, we shouldn't suspend our basic humanitarian obligations simply because the Burma bungee jumping story doesn't rate at dinner parties any more.

Peter Hinton is a North-Korea watcher who developed a interest in non-democratic government while living in China between 2008 and 2010. You can follow him on Twitter @peterjhinton. See his full profile here.